Was it something I did?

Judith Regan is a giant in the cut-throat world of publishing, a hard-nosed editor with an unflinching instinct for a bestseller. So how could she get it so wrong with the OJ Simpson book - or her audacious attempt at an excuse? Ed Pilkington reports

What on earth was she thinking? What thought process went through her mind that led her to conclude that it was a good idea to invite OJ Simpson to act out the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown, as if he had done it?

This question is now swirling around the head of Judith Regan, the formidable, and already controversial, New York publisher who on Monday added a rare achievement to her long list of accomplishments: she forced Rupert Murdoch to say sorry. It was her idea as head of her own imprint, ReganBooks, to publish If I Did It, in which Simpson jumps through hypothetical hoops to describe how he would have killed Brown and her boyfriend, Ron Goldman, had he been the murderer. And it was she who conducted the interview that was pulled from the Fox network, in which a tearful OJ blurts out to camera, "I can't do this. I can't have my kids hear me say this."

We now know what Murdoch thought of the idea. Pulling it, he said that he agreed with the American people that it was "an-ill considered project", going on to make that all-but historic apology to the families of the victims. His psychology as the owner of both HarperCollins, ReganBook's parent company, and of Fox, is easy enough to explain. The chairman of News Corporation is not one to shrink from controversy and tastelessness but he will never go so far as to damage business, and the OJ saga was undoubtedly doing that.

But Regan's thinking is not so easily nailed. She is, after all, one of the most successful publishers in the world today. She has proven, time and again, that she has a touch for divining the popular mood, and for creating the next year's publishing sensation. Admirers say that her feeling for what makes a good book is unsurpassed, what she herself calls "a little itch in my nose". She is a risk-taker, who moves with breathtaking speed when she spots a story, publishing some books within an unthinkable two weeks. Her catalogue displays a catholic taste, spanning the history of the Middle East to romance, cooking to photography. Nor can her list of authors be pigeon-holed, spanning the full political range from Michael Moore to Rush Limbaugh. She can also point to the work of serious writers she has championed, including the latest novel by Jess Walter, The Zero, which was nominated for a National Book Award.

So how could she on this occasion come so astoundingly unstuck?

Well, not a bad starting point is her own explanation. Her statement, issued at the weekend shortly before the project was kyboshed, is big (it runs to 2,216 words), brash and bold. In fact, it must rank among the most audacious self-defences of all time.

The statement is headed "Why I Did It" and begins with an account of the domestic violence she suffered at the hands of her first husband, a psychiatrist whom she does not name. "That man was tall, dark, and handsome. A great athlete. A brilliant mind ... He charmed me. We had a child. And then he knocked me out, with a blow to my head, and sent me to the hospital."

So the OJ Simpson ruse was her attempt to rectify the injustice of his acquittal in 1995, on her own behalf and on that of other domestic violence victims: "When I sat face to face with the killer, I wanted him to confess, to release us all from the wound of the conviction that was lost on that fall day in October 1995."

It also stemmed from her belief in the confessional. She describes how her parents would take her to church as a child where she was told to say penance for her sins. She recounts the prayers she recited and goes on to insist she published the OJ book in the spirit of repentance. "I wanted him, and the men who broke my heart and your hearts, to tell the truth, to confess their sins, to do penance and to amend their lives. Amen."

To an unusual degree in publishing, which tends to be a rather anonymous trade, Regan has, throughout her career, attracted great media interest, much of it critical. That is perhaps because she is a woman in high places. As she once put it: "When you're a woman doing battle, somehow you're an aberration." Much of the publicity she has drawn has been of the "very successful but ..." variety. New York magazine said she was, hands-down, the most successful editor in the American book business, but added that she may also be "the most combative victim in history". In an acerbic profile, Vanity Fair magazine said there was no question that "she rules by intimidation".

The magazine's media columnist, Michael Wolff, has known Regan since college days at Vassar in New York state. He thinks her OJ Simpson apologia will be seen as a turning point. "She has always been going nuts, but this is the point at which she lost it. It reads like it was written by the Unabomber."

Wolff points to a forthcoming book - much in the kiss-and-tell genre that Regan has herself championed - by one of her former employees, called Because She Can. It is fictionalised, but no one will miss the meaning of the maniacal publisher who has her own imprint at a large publishing house.

"There's a lot of truth in that title about Judy," Wolff says. "Why does she? Because nobody tries to stop her. If you do, the reaction you get from her makes it just not worth it."

On the other hand, you might say that it is precisely her warrior instincts, coupled with her eye for what the mass public wants to read, that have made her such a successful publisher. She is fond of quoting General George Patton and once shouted at her employees, "I have the biggest cock in the building!"

The results of her whirlwind energy are all around us. Limbaugh would not be quite the monolithic reactionary that he is without Regan having had the idea of taking him out of radio and turning him into a published author. Likewise the shock jock Howard Stern. And she can even be controversial within the confines of her own list. In 2002, she published Michael Moore's detraction of the state of America, Stupid White Men; three years later she published Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man, a detraction of him. Boring and bloodless she is not.

But she will never wholly be able to shrug off her reputation for pushing publishing to its more populist extremes, with sex often part of the mix. How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, the autobiography of Jenna Jameson, is marketed by ReganBooks as "a titillating sexual history, an insider's guide to the secret workings of the billion-dollar adult-film industry". The imprint's current list includes a cartoon novel, How to Make Money Like a Porn Star. "Like all great American stories," the blurb says, "it features humble beginnings, life-changing tragedy, stripping, abuse, implants, fame, addiction, bigger implants, abduction, gunplay, downfall, and even bigger implants."

Titles such as that make some people suspicious about the motives of a woman who claims to have the interests of the victimised and abused at heart. And so does the other quality that is consistently attached to her: the ability to make serious money. In some years ReganBooks, despite its small size, is reputed to have made up to a quarter of the earnings of its giant parent, HarperCollins.

In her statement, Regan makes an attempt to justify the fact that she paid for the OJ Simpson book and interview - anything between $2m and $3.5m (£1m-£1.85m). She says the money went to a "third party" and that she had been assured it would all go to Simpson's children.

That does not rub with the families of Brown and Goldman, who in the six days since the Simpson project was announced have waged a successful campaign to have it stopped. "I don't think there's any credibility in the argument that [Regan] did this for good reasons," says the Goldman family's lawyer, Jonathan Polak. "The facts point to the conclusion that she did it for money. If she didn't, then why didn't she approach the victims' families at the beginning, and why didn't she donate the profits to charity?"